Hart Crane, Southern Cross

I wanted you, nameless Woman of the South,

No wraith, but utterly—as still more alone

The Southern Cross takes night

And lifts her girdles from her, one by one—

High, cool,

wide from the slowly smoldering fire

Of lower heavens,—

vaporous scars!

Eve! Magdalene!

or Mary, you?

Whatever call—falls vainly on the wave.

O simian Venus, homeless Eve,

Unwedded, stumbling gardenless to grieve

Windswept guitars on lonely decks forever;

Finally to answer all within one grave!

And this long wake of phosphor,

iridescent

Furrow of all our travel—trailed derision!

Eyes crumble at its kiss. Its long-drawn spell

Incites a yell. Slid on that backward vision

The mind is churned to spittle, whispering hell.

I wanted you . . . The embers of the Cross

Climbed by aslant and huddling aromatically.

It is blood to remember; it is fire

To stammer back . . . It is

God—your namelessness. And the wash—

All night the water combed you with black

Insolence. You crept out simmering, accomplished.

Water rattled that stinging coil, your

Rehearsed hair—docile, alas, from many arms.

Yes, Eve—wraith of my unloved seed!

The Cross, a phantom, buckled—dropped below the dawn.

Light drowned the lithic trillions of your spawn.